


crucify me against your body (because it's the only place I know home)

by ammunitionist



Category: 1917 (Movie 2019)
Genre: M/M, Pining, Religious Conflict, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, vague mentions of death but its war yknow, wooo boy it's Religion Hour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:06:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22433104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ammunitionist/pseuds/ammunitionist
Summary: schofield is not allowed desire.but, god, there's something about blake.
Relationships: Lance Corporal WIlliam Schofield/ Lance Corporal Thomas Blake, Will Schofield/ Tom Blake
Comments: 11
Kudos: 158





	crucify me against your body (because it's the only place I know home)

perhaps it's not quite rational.

god, schofield knows it by now.

he knows _exactly_ what it is. if life at home hadn't made him well aware, life in catastrophe made him acutely, crucially, painfully aware of how delusional he is. no desires mattered here. not one man surrounding him was afforded a modicum of choice.

that was a part of war, he thinks.

they wear the same clothes. they eat the same food, and when they don't get their meager rations- more frequently than anyone will tell army command about- they eat nothing together.

shoot the same guns at the same people. wear the same helmets. the same battalion markers. it's all perfectly formatted to make them into a unit. there is no man in war.

there are armies, walls of bayonetted rifles, the rich fucking bastards who move them around like chess pawns, and there is blood.

clean as he gets, the blood never leaves the ridges in schofield's fingers. he doesn't even get to pick where he's stained.

desire is negligent. lance corporal william schofield (a collection of words that mean nothing followed by a name that doesn't mean much more) moves when he's told to, shoots at whoever his lieutenant points at, and collapses to sleep as soon as he's sure it won't kill him.

with nothing back home, and nothing in front of him, will lets his soul melt into the filthy bandages wrapped around his boots and prays that the bullets miss him again.

every man around him is the same. dirty, uniforms and skin caked with dried mud and other earthly accoutrements. dirty in the sense of the soul, too, but schofield finds himself in no position to judge.

all killers, no one of them was worthy of prehension. it didn't matter if you swapped risque photos of women, swore, drank, fucked a french girl for a bob with a girl back home- they were all murderers. that one sin made all of their other trespasses immaterial.

ironically, schofield carried a rosary on his first shipment out. his mother made him promise to, swearing that her god would keep him safe from bullets.

he lost it after his second round at the front. he was firing with the frantic blindness of fresh meat, sweeping the end of his rifle around and pulling the trigger as soon as he remembered to do so.

it snapped into a million tiny beads, his thumb having caught on a protruding string and jerking forward as he reloaded his gun.

the tiny silver figure, center of the rosary, glinted up at him from the mud for a few taunting moments. it would have been so easy to bend over and pick it up, stick it in his pocket. he could clean it up in the river behind the lines once this was over, stick it in his little blue box with the pictures of family.

schofield settled his shoulders, stepped on it squarely, and exploded the skull of a sprinting hun.

will hasn’t thought about the rosary in months. his mother didn't even ask about it during his painful weeks back home, probably too overjoyed at his return to remember it even existed. scho is glad for that, because if she had remembered it-

suffice to say that 'tired' wouldn't be a good excuse to miss Sunday service anymore.

it hasn't crossed his mind in months. too preoccupied with the act of war.

and then blake looks holy, spread out like that in the tall grass.

their battalion gets a rotation back. it's only a few days, but it's enough that morale is high and fucking everyone is breaking form. lieutenants are napping against their helmets, next to their subordinates. mess cooks give out extra coffee without any haggling involved. men mill about in various states of undress, from full uniform to shirtless in wilting, suspender-absent breeches.

schofield, as with everything else, waits for it to be over.

* * *

he's wandering the camp with extra coffee in hand. it's not that he didn't want to sit and talk, more that he couldn't. the jargon that spilled from the men's mouths at times- it makes his skin crawl. scho chooses to wander into the grass, eyes on the tree-dotted landscape.

france is a gorgeous place, if you elect to ignore the war ravaging its beauty. schofield can't help feeling guilt at that.

he almost trips on blake.

it's funny that he's out here, alone. people liked blake. he was good at their nothing talk, though william could tell he was capable of much more. he participated because of the community, not for any particular interest.

schofield wonders what he's doing out here, and he goes to ask, until he realizes that blake is asleep.

blake's got his helmet tilted down over his face, like he always does. it hides how _young_ he looks when he's asleep. awake, anyone can pretend to be a man, hide behind the grit and cruelty of war.

asleep, the softness in blake's cheeks and weightlessness of his brow betray how young he is. pink lips gapped, blue eyes hidden, jaw tucked back into his uniform for some kind of animalistic preservation instinct. they're all giveaways.

schofield stands over the sleeping body of a man not yet a man, and he feels the center of his chest begin to tug.

blake has his arms out, legs straight. it's like he was stargazing in broad daylight and then fell asleep in the position. like he was too tired to move into a more natural pose.

the tug in schofield's chest intensifies to a pain when he realizes what it looks like.

crucifixion.

he stands over his soldier, feeling the black-red pull start to bring him down. it's all he can do to leave blake's helmet over his perfect lips.

lucky for schofield, the signal for mess is called.

he nudges blake with a steel toe, watching the younger man start and sit up, disoriented.

"wha-"

"it’s mess. cmon."

scho hauls blake to his feet, chest to chest, feeling blake's exhale against the column of his throat. he shivers.

the two soldiers start their slow amble back to the encampment, blake stifling a yawn and fixing his tin helmet to his belt.

a twin pair of beech trees frame them.

"what were you doing out in the fields anyways?" blake asks absently, picking something from his nails.

schofield decides the truth isn't so far off this time around.

"praying."

**Author's Note:**

> yeeeeehaw kids  
> im sorry if i got some of the rosary details wrong i was raised baptist not catholic,,
> 
> also- comments! love em. please tell me what you thought!! i live off feedback


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